The 144,160 parking placards registered in the city inventory have been reduced by over 25,000, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler announced yesterday. The cutbacks are targeted at what many frustrated drivers see as an abuse of a system that lets police, teachers and civil servants park for free at meters and many off-limits areas. Initial cuts have focused on the 80,770 placards issued to 68 city agencies, exempting the 63,390 placards used by the Education Department.......

Turns out the number parking placards sloshing around New York is over 142,000, twice the number guesstimated by Mayor Bloomberg’s office when he announced a 20% cutback on the placards, which allow police, teachers and civil servants to park for free at meters and many off-limits areas. The new total does not take into consideration the number of counterfeit and expired placards, and the city is still not done counting, so this preliminary total is......

In a few days the city will begin its promised crackdown on the glut of parking placards issued to civil servants. But according to Uncivil Servants, a website that documents illegally parked cars displaying city permits, employees of Park East, an Upper East Side synagogue, have been using bogus DIY parking placards for years. And since they don’t even work for the city, their privileges won’t be affected by the new rules. Uncivil Servants says......

Mayor Bloomberg's announcement that he would reduce the number of parking permits for civil servants by 20% has annoyed yet another group. Joining police officers, fire fighters, and other emergency workers are teachers. Teachers union president Randi Weingarten sent Mayor Bloomberg a letter to call the permit limits"deeply disturbing." Weingarten complains that teachers actually have too few permits. United Federation of Teachers vice-president Michael Mulgrew told the Sun that teachers end up making "informal deals"......

Mayor Bloomberg has announced that the city will crackdown on the abuse of parking permits issued to civil servants, reducing the overall number by 20%. The change comes after the Post revealed in November that “149 separate government entities had qualified for the coveted placards last year, ranging from the state lottery to the US Navy recruiting office, which was allocated an astonishing 110 permits.” In fact, so many agencies produce and distribute the parking......

This morning, the Today show featured a segment about a NYC resident (and Mets fan, judging by his hat) who calls himself Jimmy Justice and spends his days documenting various civil servants - mainly traffic enforcement agents - committing various sins. It's like Uncivil Servants with more than a dash of confrontational TV. You can see Jimmy Justice's videos here on YouTube. He asks a traffic agent why she's parked in front of a hydrant,......

Residential parking permits in Long Island City and Brooklyn Heights? Park and Ride areas near train stations? Eliminating government parking placards? The NY Sun has a look a what the Bloomberg administration is considering to "sweeten" the congestion pricing proposal as it works to gain support for the plan (it's up for consideration in 6 weeks) and it includes all of the above. Reporter Annie Karni writes: Residential parking permits could be established in Brooklyn......

Uncivil Servants was only launched last week, but it's already a hotbed of discussion. The website asks people to submit photographs of vehicles that are parked illegally (many times on sidewalks or in front of hydrants), but one commenter, "bklyncop1," questioned showing so police vehicle information for criminals to see - check out this thread from Monday. Another commenter, musha, wrote:As I said, the plates are not necessary for this site to accomplish its......

Di Fara's pizza still isn't open, a week after it closed by health inspectors. Maybe all the mouse droppings have something to do with that? And to top off a very bad week for the De Marco clan, their other pizzaria, recently the scene of the Greenwich Village shooting, announced that it will be closing for good. Still no answer on the cause of the mysterious, high-pitched ringing noise in Brooklyn Heights. Our theory......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: Slashing on West 65th, fatal pedestrian stike in Bay Ridge, and a jumper down in Queens. See a car with a government-issued permit parking illegally? Send a picture to Uncivil Servants, a new website dedicated to exposing parking permit abuse The St. Patrick's Day Parade planner moves the FDNY from the front of the parade to the middle because he doesn't want drunk firefighters at the start The Voice......

Who knew that city employees' cars parked in city spaces deny the city $46 million in annual revenue? Schaller Consulting has issued a new study that shows more city workers drive to work because they get free parking, but if city workers "commuted by auto at the same rate as their private sector counterparts, 19,200 fewer vehicles would enter Manhattan each day." Which then translates into $46 million in meter revenue in the area from......